Mr. MaGoo Goes to Iraq

The story, and several subsequent reports, revealed that Saddam had put together a massive and sophisticated nuclear-weapons program virtually under the nose of one Hans Blix, who was then head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the group charged with monitoring compliance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. In the years leading up to 1991, Blix gave Saddam high marks for abiding by the treaty; the nuclear program was discovered in 1991 only after an Iraqi defector told authorities about it....

"The Iraqis were given stars for good behavior, when in fact they were making bombs in the rooms next door to the ones the inspectors were going into." Two other nuclear-arms experts, Paul Leventhal and Steven Dolley of the Nuclear Control Institute, have written that while the best arms inspectors are "confrontational, refusing to accept Iraqi obfuscations and demanding evidence of destroyed weapons . . . IAEA was more accommodating, giving Iraqi nuclear officials the benefit of the doubt when they failed to provide evidence that all nuclear weapons components had been destroyed and all prohibited activities terminated."